Instagram Growth Rules — Step-by-Step Guide & Transcript

[00:00] Instagram's come a long way. From it working like crazy, everyone got famous, got rich pretty easily, to suddenly millions of people flooding in, all doing the same thing, all kind of sucks, nothing works anymore, to now, actually the game becoming easier again. And I'm not kidding,

[00:14] and I'm aware it's as crowded as ever, but looking at more than 15,000 creators in real film this year, turns out there is a window, especially for smaller creators that are stuck in what we call the low-view jail, to break out way easier, way more predictably. That is,

[00:28] if you know how to play these four new rules of Instagram in short form content that we're going to talk about right now. Now, I know you're probably overstimulated by everyone talking about how Instagram changes every single day, right? But honestly, it really did change,

[00:41] and the algorithm really does things differently now. So if we look at how it was about a year ago, it was basically, well, you post a reel, it goes out to your followers first, and depending how they react, it might get shown to some people,

[00:53] maybe not. But now, it kind of seems like they're trying to reverse this whole thing, and they're actually making followers completely irrelevant, right? Meta actually talked about this in one of their earnings investors calls. They'd be saying that same day posts now get recommended twice as much as they used to.

[01:08] And that is exactly why we're back, my friends. Because with the right strategy, your content can actually get picked up the same day. And I'm going to show you exactly how that works in this video. Now, here's the thing, and there always is a thing,

[01:21] because like I said, right now it's also way more crowded than ever before, which gets me right into point number one. and it's the most important rule for the new era of Instagram. So quality engagement is actually what drives the algorithm right now.

[01:33] It's not just views and sort of these nonsensical things that people obsess over. A lot of people actually talk about how skip rate is the number one thing to track, but honestly, skip rate doesn't really say that much on its own, right? I had a real, for example, make $19,000 with a really bad skip rate of 60-something percent

[01:49] and honestly, very bad hook, yet it's made a bunch of money Because all of these things are only important if the algorithm really hits your audience right. So instead, you want to look at and optimize your content for these two things first,

[02:01] way before looking at your skip rate. So first of all, your overall watch time on Reels. So the actual number, how long people stay. If it's a carry cell, by the way, you can check when people like that, right? So you want to look whether there's a dip.

[02:13] If there is a real dip that goes down almost to zero, you know, something's off there. And then your overall engagement rate. More specifically, you want to take a look at the share rate. So the shares you get by 100 views.

[02:25] Plus, and that's unfortunately a lot harder to track, but it's really important, it's the amount of quality comments that you get, right? So just a one-liner emoji thing or a manly chat trigger word

[02:37] doesn't count as quality engagement and as a quality comment. So what you want to look at is comments that basically look like somebody's trying to write a book, right? and that are closely related to the pain point to the content that you were actually talking about in your reel.

[02:53] So first of all, how can you up that and how can you get more of these comments? It's actually pretty simple. But first of all, you want to have a strong opinion and take a side of whatever it is that you talk about, right? Something you actually believe in.

[03:06] For example, like with the skit right now, I'm sure a lot of you already started to send me a DM or something like this saying, You suck. That's totally wrong. And I'm totally fine with that. But ideally, you always want to try to frame your content around something that people could have at least a discussion about, right?

[03:22] If it's boring and non-edgy, nobody's going to be interested in actually commenting. It's just bland content. And second of all, you really need to make your whole content really clear about what you're about and who it's for, right?

[03:34] Because when nobody has a question in their mind, nobody's going to comment, right? Because nobody cares. But when you're real, authentic, and kind of press on their exact problem that they have, people start to write their own story underneath it, right?

[03:48] And that is the book, basically, you want them to write down. You want to make them feel like you are the one that actually finally understands them Now as for the shares part because that equally as important you want to aim for roughly 2 of your views being shares right If you can hit that actually it already pretty good And usually that when reels start being your usual views and breaking out at least a little bit If you have 3 3 or more or like 5 that is when the algorithm is going to open up like crazy because it sees well that something with reel value

[04:18] So with all that out of the way, the obvious question is, well, how do you actually get your Reels to those numbers? How can I do that, man? And honestly, the easiest way I've found is a lot simpler than most people think, which is rule number two. Every Reel basically now gets judged on its own.

[04:32] Because the algorithm recently switched from looking at your account as a whole and then judging it sort of based on everything together to actually looking at each Reel individually first, right? Transcribing what's inside, looking at what's inside, and then finding the right audience exactly for that.

[04:48] which is honestly one of the greatest things that AI has actually given to us, because suddenly if the algorithm really understands what's up, and all the metrics are set, you can basically blow up from zero to a hundred overnight,

[05:00] maybe even a thousand. I actually see it a lot with the people that we work with. Some are going from being stuck with 2,000 solvers to 20,000 within a week because they just hit all the marks that we just talked about, and the algorithm knows what to do with them.

[05:12] Now here's the thing, and again, there is always a thing. Every Reel getting judged on its own also means that basically every Reel is just one shot. And one Reel alone is usually not going to hit all the marks the first time.

[05:24] And that's actually what we see a lot again and again, is that people just stop way too early with one after posting one Reel. Because if you post one Reel, let's say, and then it slops, it actually means literally nothing.

[05:36] Here's an example. I had a Reel, this one that actually pretty well for my business, got 80,000 targeted views. That's not super broad, but still more than 2,300 comments. people actually giving me their email address.

[05:48] So here's the thing. The first time I actually posted it, it got a thousand something views, and it didn't hit all the marks. Actually, it hit none of them, right? Not a lot of shares. And I could have just said, well, that's a bad topic.

[06:00] It didn't really work. Let me just try something totally different. Because that's what people usually say, right? People say, you need to try a lot, post a lot. But then it doesn't really tell you what you need to try. Which is, well, look at your data.

[06:12] And that's what I did. and basically check if it's in alignment with your audience and with all these metrics that you need to add. Turns out with this reel, I thought it was pretty good. I actually spent a lot of time creating it, but it turns out, no,

[06:24] this one's actually pretty bad. Because after all, content creation is still freaking hard. That's just the way it is. And there's always these variables that are sometimes really hard to see yourself. Let's say you're just stuck with writing a script a whole day long or for an hour or something like this.

[06:37] A lot of the times what I've actually noticed is if you take a little bit of time away from your script before you record it and suddenly coming back after a while you start to see them from a different set of eyes again and things make more sense and you can condense it more or rearrange it more and that's honestly a lot what we do

[06:52] with our clients. Targeted feedback essentially right? Look at it, okay, do this differently, that's not gonna work for you, do this, etc. Just because it's sometimes really hard to see for yourself don't ask me why honestly. Now to come back

[07:05] to the real from before, I could change a few things that I thought would be more interesting for my audience, according to what we just talked about. At least I tried to make it clear for the algorithm to find this right audience. And guess what? It actually did a lot better,

[07:20] but still not fully where I wanted it to be. It got around 6,000 views here. The shares were already a lot better. The saves in the comments were a little bit better too. But I'm like, well, seems like you still don't really get it. So I changed some things again. And guess what?

[07:35] It got 80,000 views, around 2.6% share ratio, which is above the threshold. Not the three, three and a half point thing yet, but as you can see, it hit the mark way better than the others.

[07:47] And that prompted the algorithm to show it to way more people in my target audience. And like I said got more than 2 comments there Lots of emails More than a thousand emails which means if you get what I mean a whole bunch of cash into this is flowing it coming from these feet So a flat reel doesn mean jack shit the first time you post it

[08:05] The only thing it actually means is just it didn't hit the months yet. That's it. So look at your data, change one thing, post it again. Change one thing, post it again. Whether that's on trial reels or just in your feed.

[08:17] Let's say you don't have trial reels yet. Nobody cares anyway. They're just posting your feed. doesn't matter. But if you get them to the next equally important rule, and you're not going to like it, you need to post more. And I know you've probably heard this before, and it's not just because there's a lot more competition out there.

[08:32] You basically need to just post more than them. But the actual reason is because you need to understand what really moves your audience, according to what we just talked about, to hit these trigger points better and to be able to break out more consistently. Because like I said, the algorithm really favors that right now,

[08:46] and it's gotten really good at understanding who your audience really is. But that only happens if you feed it with the right thing. Adam LaFerri, by the way, the head of Instagram, actually said this recently that you can find an audience overnight

[09:00] even if you've never posted before. And we actually have this a lot with people I work with. So let me show you how you can sort of make this happen a lot easier. So, for example, one of my clients was posting a lot, actually,

[09:12] still at the beginning. She had around 263 interviews to read. She kept testing, like we just said, and understood that she's so early. And suddenly one of her reels broke out 30,000 views, a lot more than her usual 300.

[09:25] And this 30,000 view reel got her around 500 followers, super targeted followers. And the real important stuff, it actually got some DMs of people asking to work with her on a really small account.

[09:37] I think it was like 1,000, 1,500 followers or something like this. And yes, if you look at it from the outside angle, after the fact, it looks like an overnight success reel, right? Breaking out overnight and things like that.

[09:49] But this thing only worked because she posted a whole bunch of videos beforehand, casting out, trying to understand who her audience really is. So she could have probably not hit that by just posting this one reel first,

[10:01] if you get what I mean. Because it's just a result of all the hard work and data that's basically been unseen from the outside beforehand. And here's the other thing that's kind of getting more brutal. Nobody's ever going to follow you or reach out to you if they just saw one reel, right?

[10:14] They basically need to spend at least a little more time with you and your content before considering that. And coincidentally, that's what the Instagram algorithm nowadays really loves. I didn't mention it before, but that's the third metric you actually want to track.

[10:27] Unfortunately, you can't track it. That's the thing. It's called session time. You see how long people spend time with you on your profile, with your content. Let's say you post twice a week, right? Let's say two 30-second reels.

[10:39] And let's assume they all watch all the reels all the way to the end, which nobody usually does. But by the end of that one week, people basically have spent a hot minute with you. That's all. But do you really think people are going to start to

[10:53] trust you, like you, follow you, and want to buy from you after this minute? And conversely, even more important, do you really think you can understand how to target and how to talk to your

[11:05] audience, how to structure your content basically to get them to trust you with this one minute a week? I guess not. I actually recently started with a specific protocol for the people that I work with, which is we have to post initially at least 30 to 50 reels as fast as possible,

[11:20] mainly to collect data and to adjust based on that data. Everything beforehand is just guessing, right? Educated guesses. Some of them work. Some of them just work because it's coincidence.

[11:32] But we can't really scale with that. It turns out a lot of the times after the 30 to 50 reel posting sprint, basically, people tell me they didn't really understand their audience before, even though they thought they did. So get your ass off the ground.

[11:45] I post a lot. You trial reels whenever you can. Repurpose stuff, right? That's the thing I'm going to talk about right now. We super hot And for example carousels on Instagram total game changer as well You can basically just take your reels repost them to a carousel tweak some things the right way

[12:03] Again, I'm not going to get into this right now, but just a small nugget from my research. A carousel with a video as the first frame, where something at least is moving, seems to get pushed to non-followers a lot more recently, right?

[12:16] You didn't hear it from me. But poor thing, you have to really understand that everyone in your niche nowadays has the exact same tools as you have right now. They all have trial reels. They all have AI. They all have basically this new cooler algorithm so it's easier for everyone,

[12:29] which means that whoever runs these tests and gets real insight about their audience faster and gets to the bottom of their audience first, they can climb out on top. People are like right now, well, cool to say, but we're doing the start

[12:41] with these 30 to 50 reels. Actually, both something new, something awesome. For you, by the way, it's not attached to anything. Basically, you put your account in, answer a bunch of questions and this whole thing looks at your actual reels

[12:53] and finds what's holding you back and your Instagram back based on all my frameworks based on data from thousands of reels and stuff like this and then it gives you a plan for it right including what your first 30 to 50 reels

[13:05] should roughly look like obviously it's just a starting point takes literally 2 minutes link is down in the description totally free and that actually gets me right to the last rule that surprised me not a tiny bit and it was honestly

[13:17] inevitable but it's super important which is content consumption is becoming fundamentally different right now. And if we look at all these analytics tools and things like that, they all say overall views are down.

[13:30] If we look at search, traffic is down across the board, whether that's on Google, on YouTube, on Instagram, as far as we can tell. And I actually believe this happens because people just don't search for basic stuff on the Internet anymore.

[13:42] Instead, they go to check it at 2 o'clock first. You probably noticed it yourself. But what I feel like we're seeing across the board with social media and content is that people's behavior has fundamentally changed with AI. And it's changing as we speak.

[13:56] So certain problem-solving content and tutorial content is just not interesting anymore. Because AI does it for people in a way more personalized way. So the actual way to approach content, especially short-form content, is fundamentally different than it was just a year ago.

[14:11] And honestly, I still haven't fully found out what that means and where it's going to go because it's changing so fast. But I can tell you right now from the people that work with me, I'm seeing content go just a layer deeper or that's just a little bit more specific work way better across the board.

[14:28] Right. Because people want to see real experts with real experience and with some real grit. For example, I started tracking which views actually lead to sales and leads and not just views for me and for some of my clients. And a lot of times if somebody has an overall view increase and it looks like, oh, they're getting less views,

[14:44] actually doesn't mean anything in terms of them being able to get less revenue or make less sales from their content, actually. Which is very interesting if you ask me. And to me, it seems like just the surface level viewership has been scraped off and they're just being taken by chat QBT and AI.

[15:01] But it doesn't matter because those were never the people anyway that wanted to hire you, buy your stuff. And as far as I'm aware, at least right now, the actual audience for solutions and value is still there the same way. So it just looks like you have less views, but that's about it.

[15:15] The point being, don't look too much at your view stats and just look at that video, not just by the amount of views that it gets. Instead, look at the other metrics first. Start to track your stuff, especially leads and sales, if that's what you're after.

[15:27] Now, here's the other thing. If you follow these four rules, at some point, one of your reels is going to go up. And when it does that, thousands of strangers are going to land on your profile. and they're brutal, honestly, because they decide in about two seconds

[15:39] if they're going to follow you or check out more or leave and just hate you for the rest of their life. So watch this video next where I show you the four changes to double your follow ratio from the amount of people that come to your profile, including a way to arrange your grid

[15:53] that I don't think anybody's ever talked about. It's right there. I'll see you soon.